Arsenic Poisons Millions in Bangladesh — But They’re Not the Only Ones

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A cross-post from Time.com’s Ecocentric blog: A new study published Saturday in the British medical journal the Lancet found that tens of millions of people in Bangladesh have been exposed to poisonous levels of arsenic from contaminated groundwater. Bangladesh has struggled with arsenic in its water supply since a disastrous campaign in the 1970s to [...]

Survey finds adult drivers use cell phones as much as teens

A new survey on cell-phone distraction while driving finds that adult motorists are just as likely as teens to text behind the wheel, and even more likely to talk on their cell phones. The survey conducted by the Pew Internet Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project involved 2,252 American adults, 1,917 of whom owned [...]

Are we failing to stop the next flu pandemic?

The H1N1 flu pandemic last year came out of nowhere. Well, not exactly — H1N1 first emerged in human beings in Mexico. But that wasn’t where most influenza experts were looking. The focus had been on southeast Asia, where the H5N1 avian flu had been infecting — and killing — human beings for the past [...]

Panel recommends FDA approval of 5-day emergency contraception

A U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory group recommended that the federal agency approve a new form of emergency contraception that would work up to 5 days after intercourse, the New York Times reports. Plan B, the “morning after” pill that is currently available over the counter to women ages 18 and older, can [...]

ER visits surge for abuse of legal drugs

In 2008, roughly one million people wound up in the emergency room for abuse of prescription and over-the-counter drugs — just as many as visited the ER after using illegal substances, according to new data released yesterday by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). [...]

10 Risk Factors Linked to 90% of Strokes

Analyzing data on 6,000 people — half of whom suffered a stroke, and half of had not — from 22 countries around the globe, researchers from Canada’s McMaster University identified 10 common risk factors, including smoking, high blood pressure and belly fat, associated with 9 out of 10 strokes. The results of the INTERSTROKE study, as [...]

Study: online communities encourage eating disorders

Social networking is the most common reason young people use the Internet. Increasingly, that social interaction is happening on websites devoted to eating disorders. According to a new study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Stanford University School of Medicine, the Web is rife with so-called pro-ana and pro-mia [...]

Have we created too many rules for pregnancy?

© Colin Hawkins/cultura/Corbis

Don’t eat cold cuts, swordfish, or “soft” cheese. Try to limit your exposure to stress and don’t drink much caffeine. And, of course, don’t drink alcohol. The list of things that women need to avoid during pregnancy seems to grow by the day, but some researchers are starting to question whether some of these rules [...]

HIV research: breastfeeding, kidney transplants

New research published in the July 17 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine suggests promising developments in the battle against HIV and AIDS. In a study of more than 2,300 breastfeeding HIV-positive mothers, researchers from the University of North Carolina and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that anti-retroviral drug regimes [...]

The brain science behind why we care what others think

A team of researchers from University College London and Aarhus University in Denmark may have uncovered some clues to help explain why we care what other people think — and why some people care more than others. The research, published in the journal Current Biology, suggests that the area of our brains associated with reward [...]